Tag Archives: child

Now that she’s arrived, was there anything else to it? A life summoned itself and paused for a while. Yes, there was always a pause, Larisa noticed; a breather in between the chapters.

She never imagined her death, never was the type to bear the hubris of planning her own funeral. Like weddings, death demanded metaphors. To capture oneself, to be summarized, direly: But how can one not be so many things at once? Besides, the way she felt, ceremonies strived for a shared experience; not a centralized meditation that treated the self as the object of all other events; that separated and sought how different one was from the rest, taking for granted the universality of it all. She didn’t have the ego for it.

Larisa had been living for others, certainly: a symptom assigned mostly to her gender. In her family, she had witnessed the earlier generations of women lose themselves in sacrificial love. For the sake of their children, their husbands, their aging parents, they carried on serving; until they found themselves having a hard time remembering what they themselves had wanted, originally, all along. Remember those days? How many times she’d heard the mournful reminiscence in a woman’s voice: Those days! What happened since then, Larisa wondered, herself still a young girl; what force of obscurity slithered itself in between and demanded for a retraction, or a delay at least.

Definitely, she wouldn’t lose the sight of her own purpose, she thought! Yet, the loneliness came scratching at the backdoor, becoming louder as she compared the things other women claimed as accomplishments: dramatic courtships, the victory in which meant expensive weddings and doting husbands, as one could only hope; then, the automatic events of pregnancy and nest acquiring (building, building, gaining weightiness); the demands of a chosen lifestyle, or in the cases of the less fortunate — merely survivals. Every woman she knew had leapt into all of it without ever questioning the reality of her expectations. How could their husbands — the equally unknowing human beings with a whole other set of expectations imposed onto them — keep up? They too, when young, once dreamt of following the call of the world’s magnificence. But lives demanded to be defined by success; and what others made of success — was not at all what she’d imagined.

There was love, of course. There would always be love. Beyond her own anxiety and self-judgement, she could see that a life was only as successful as the love one projected. Still, in the beginning, it was loneliness that determined the pursuit of it; and loneliness made things more urgent, non-negotiable and somehow crucial. It conformed the shape of love, so it could fit into the missing parts; make-up for the previous mistakes of others; fix, mold, make it better. Because in a person, there were always parts missing: from too much love, or not enough of it, from the prototypes of our lovers (god bless our parents!), who couldn’t possibly step up to what love was meant to be, as she thought of it: all forgiving, non-discriminating, fluid.

And what about the needs? One had to have needs. It was a path of nature. Larisa found the balance between the self-fulfillment of those needs and the ones she could hand over to another — unpoetic and stressful. So, she chose to handle all of them on her own; not with any sense of confrontation or showmanship, but with the esteem of self-reliance. And surely, Larisa thought, it would only elevate the love. Surely, if one handled the demands of one’s survival with this much grace, there would be more room for the beauty and the compassion; the reflection of the self in the suffering of others and the almost rapturous feeling of knowing exactly how it felt to be another; for such a love lacked fear, and it could take up spaces with its tide-like tongues, and whenever it retracted, one only had to wait for its return. In light, in easiness: What surrender!

Larisa wasn’t really sure how or where, in the self, the unease began. On that day — a day unmarked by any significance — she’d gone into a church. With her head bowed and eyes half-closed, she didn’t seek answers or help, only a space from which to observe the ways her thoughts moved, sometimes birthing moods, sometimes — nothingness; and she watched herself alter, even while in stillness, mind creating matter; thoughts becoming intentions; and she cast the net into the endless vagueness and brought them back into the very is-ness of her: Into what she believed the most.

This church appeared make-shift, marking a spot where, under an influence of a former fanatical thought, an ancient Russian cathedral had been burnt down over half a century ago. A modest wooden building, unheated, undecorated, in a shape of a polygon, sat in the shadowy corner of a square. The country was living through an era of resurrected gods and revalidated heros, often dead by now, having been taken for granted for the sake of simplifying a former common ambition. Things crumbled. Alliances turned chaotic. And when everyone woke up to amended history — figures worthy of worship long gone and nearly forgotten — a common panic ensued. For even if it weren’t the ego that made a people matter, it had to be their spirit; a common memory of a civilization.

The roads had frozen overnight; and at first, she had snuck-in to thaw out her stiff toes. She purchased a candle at the door, mostly out of habit. She didn’t even know how that particular ceremony worked. Two side altars, with figures of crucified saints, sat against the walls of the church, opposite of each other. Standing there for a while, still and unnoticed, she studied the other women who moved like ghosts across the dirt floor. Everyone was fully clothed. She looked down at her feet and shifted: There was little hope of her finding much warmth there. Still, she stayed. She paused, and in the growing shadows of her memories, she waited.

Older women in head scarves, with histories written across their tired faces, were crossing themselves at their chosen mantels. Some moved their lips in prayer, repeatedly lowering their heads in a manner that came after so much practice, one was no longer moved by it. What misfortunes had brought them here? Loss required humility, otherwise one was consumed with fury. Her country had lived through tragedies with a numbness of habit. Resignation was often advised by the elderlies, yet she found herself incompetent at it.

She took another look at the suspended saints and walked over to the side alter with a Christ whose eyes were semi-open. A little girl in a rabbit fur hat clung to the leg of her grandmother. Larisa looked down at the child and without raising her hand, moved her fingers inside the mitten. The child, sensing an interaction, got shy and clutched the old woman’s leg with more zealousness, for children often appeared overwhelmed with the energy of living. Their egos struggled with the life force they had been granted (what were they supposed to do, to be? how did they matter); and juxtaposed against the even flow of hours — one’s magnificence was only seen in silence, she believed — the egos expanded; for surely, they had to become something better.

For as long as I could remember, my sister was always afraid of water. She was eight years older than me; and as we both grew up, her inability caused me confusion, delight and pride at my own skillfulness — exactly in that order.

“That’s ‘cause you were born a total daddy’s girl!” Marinka teased me. She was jealous. Obviously.

It had become somewhat of a tradition between the two us to huddle up in her bunk bed at night (until she’d left for college, Marinka would always have the top); and for hours at a time, we flipped through the albums of black-and-white family photos, while Marinka told me the stories that predated me. The stiff pages of teal cardboard smelled like the chemicals from the darkroom. Lying on my stomach, I studied the contours traced by Marinka’s fingers, until my elbows became sore.

In the year of Marinka’s birth — 1967 — the Soviet Union was peaking towards its highest glory. My sister was lucky to be born with a promising future of the citizen of the “Best Country in the World”. But in exchange for that giant favor, our dear Motherland claimed the life our father. Well, not literally, of course: This isn’t your typical sob story, of vague third-worldliness, in which the parents die off too young, leaving their poor children seriously messed-up for the rest of their lives. Dad just had to work a lot, that’s all. So, Marinka wasn’t exposed to a fatherly influence during those tender, formative years.

For weeks, for months at a time the old man would be gone from our household. According to Marinka, it made our mother none too happy.

“Really?” I whispered while patting yet another image of my mother holding her firstborn in a professionally done family portrait, while father was, well, not there.

At that point Marinka would realize she’d gone too far — after all, I was only six years old — and clumsily, she changed the subject: “Ugh! Stop groping my photos so hard! You’re gonna leave a mark!” I sat up into an imitation of her cross-legged position. The secret was to wait for Marinka’s temper flares to fizzle out.

Soon, the story continued.

In response to his woman’s nonsense, father would smile discretely; and mother would have no choice but take his word for it. No, wait. Considering the man never spoke much, it was his silence that she had to trust. And if dad were a cheating, lying scumbag, like the likes of his coworker Uncle Pavel — a handsome, salt ‘n’ pepper haired player with a mustache of a Cossack — he could’ve gotten away with it. I mean, the man was gone all the time. No matter the town or the city in which the family settled (for half a decade at the most), soon enough dad would go off to the same place called “the Polygon”.

Now, that’s exactly the part that Marinka could never clarify for me: While I patted the images of our uniformed father — gingerly this time — she couldn’t explain if he was going to the same place, or if our glorious Motherland had these Polygons up the wahzoo.

“Did mama cry?” I detoured back to gossip.

Marinka considered. “Nah. If she did, I never saw it!” Out came the photo of mother surrounded by her colleagues, laughing at the camera.

What else was the woman to do? After about a week of her spousal absence, mother would begin going over to her girlfriends for dinner nearly every night. Sometimes, Marinka came along. But on Saturdays, all the women dressed up and went to a discoteca, leaving my poor sister to her own devices.

Sure enough, “You idiot!” sis scoffed. “She waited until I grew out of them before she started going out!” For a moment, we both studied mother’s graduation portrait in which she, a Komsomol member, looked like that one actress from Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. “You’re so dense sometimes, Irka, I swear!”

Before my sis would succeed in chasing me out of her bunk bed though, I managed to give a decent comeback:

“Ooh! Look at you, using big words and stuff. Dense does as dense sees!”

I don’t know about the rest of the world and its children — who, as our Motherland promised, did NOT have as happy of childhoods as we did — but Marinka’s telltale threats were worse than, say, the warning of the nuclear attack from America. Mom was the biggest disciplinarian around town! Or maybe even in the whole of the Soviet Union!

Sometimes, Marinka did manage to tell on me. But with age, I’d gained enough escape routes from the house, to never let my mother’s disciplinarian belt to graze the skin of my ass. If worse came to worst, I climbed out of our kitchen window and hid in the giant pear tree, in the garden. No one but armies upon armies of honey bees was ever much interested in that giant monster anyway. In the summer, they flunked the heavy branches of sour fruit. But for the rest of the year, that pear tree made an excellent hiding place.

Besides, from an early age, I had noticed the difference in the athletic predispositions between the women of our family. That is to say that my mother and sister had none! I, on the other hand, was the best son that father could ever desire! I could run faster than any of the boys in my elementary school, and had scabs to show for it. Playing with my sister’s girlfriends didn’t interest me in the least, unless, of course, they were jumping rope. Then, I was like a grasshopper gone berserk inside a glass jar. And nothing transcended me into a better sense of zen than to climb trees and to organize and reorganize my father’s tool box, over and over again.

“I like it,” one said, “I think” (unusually sheepishly for her nature). “It’s got some,” she rotated her wrists up in the air, looking for the less poetic word, “‘good light’.” It took a talent to be so vague. Or it took years of mutual knowledge and histories of hurt.

The younger one averted her eyes quickly. She was getting better at busying herself in the kitchen. Throughout her childhood, she’d witnessed mother’s chaos when other people came over to visit their place. They had been lucky that way, due to her father’s reputable profession: Always finding better living quarters, so others came over quite a bit. Wanting to be the talk of the town, mother buzzed and chattered in the kitchen; and she would bang the drawers with aluminum dinnerware and slam the cupboards in an orchestra of her exhibitionist domesticity.

While mother whipped up meals and refilled drinks, her girlfriends wandered around nosily, every once in a while coming upon a tiny girl, with eyes so large they took up half of her face, playing her own game of house in the furthest corner of the bedroom. Alone.

“So cute!” the women hissed, turning on their heels unhappily for having to divert their poking.

Mother continued conducting the percussions in her kitchen:

“She’s so quiet, that child! She’s all — my husband!”

The women moved about the living-room; lurked by the family’s photographs; touched, shifted, sniffed, demanded to know the origin of things:

“You are one lucky bitch, I hope you know.”

“They meant it as a compliment,” after the women’s departure, mother would attempt to clarify things — the delicate things that her daughter could not understand yet (but perhaps with time, she would). The evil smirk of the local Algebra teacher branded itself into her memory: How could these women mean anything good? But mother didn’t want to hear it: “Stop asking stupid questions anyway! This is adults’ business.”

But now:

“So,” the older woman spoke from the bedroom doorway and eyed the open, empty space. “Are you going to ask Mike to ship you the bed?” (Pause.) “Or do you plan to house this draft in here forever?”

“What do you mean by that?” the young woman stopped, knife in her hand.

“I mean, haven’t you, guys, divided things up officially yet?”

The young woman looked back down at the gutted pickled fish under her fingers, on the cutting board. It was a task that every Russian woman performed from A to Z. From A to YA. From A — to I. Her mother would’ve drowned the detailed fish in a pool of sunflower oil; and it would stare out, with dehydrated eyeballs from underneath a layer of butchered onions meant to cover up a job so messily performed.

While peeling onions, mom would begin to cry demonstratively:

“Oy! I so pity the little bird!”

What did the bird have to do with the fish? The bird — to I. The I — to eye. Still, mother was a funny actress, so the child would spit with laughter. She couldn’t help it: She was still in love with her original prototype back then.

She now thought of that one time a thin fishbone lodged in her throat for a week; and how she gagged every night, while mother hooked her sharp nails into the back of her tongue. For months to follow, sometimes, loose scales would reveal themselves stuck on her clothes or skin; or swimming in buckets of water with floor-scrubbing rags. Mom was a disaster in the house.

In her own kitchen, however, the young woman never kept the head. She wished she had a cat to feed it to. A cat — to make-up for the missing child, to make the loneliness less oppressive. She stared at the oval crystal bowl, with even filets of pink meat, neatly arranged.

She herself was a better housekeeper, yet heading toward a divorce nonetheless. Most likely:

“Mike and I aren’t talking, mom. You know that.”

“Oh! Yes. I see,” the old woman eyed the empty bedroom yet again: Why so much space for someone with defeated ovaries then? “You, young people! You have no concept of marital endurance any more.”

She swore, he thought of the idea first. At least, that’s how she remembered it. In his defense (why was she so willing to defend him?): In his defense — she wasn’t “willing”. He was right.

“It’s just that… something isn’t working,” Mike told her over the phone, the week of one Thanksgiving which they’d agreed to spend apart. He “couldn’t do it anymore”. Her work. Her books. Why was he always taking second place after her life? Once she hung up, she cried, of course, but mostly out habit; and out of habit, she started losing weight and sleep. That’s what a wife in mourning was supposed to look like, she decided. She cropped her hair, and started wearing pants and laced up wingtip shoes. In their crammed-in basement apartment in the Bronx, she found room to pace and wonder, “Why? Why? Why?”

Her girlfriends were eventually allowed to visit the site of her disastrous marriage. They bitched; they called him names. They lurked, touched, shifted, sniffed. They studied family photographs, still on display, for signs of early check-outs. The women patted her boyish haircut and teared up a bit too willingly, some of them — being slightly grateful for feeling better about their own men.

And then, one balmy New York August afternoon, she called him from a pay phone in Harlem.

“Meet me for dinner.”

An hour later, he showed up with lilies. After a dry peck that tasted unfamiliarly, she lead the way to a Dominican joint whose wall-full of French doors was always taken down for the summer. It breathed the smell of oil — and of fried everything — onto the sweaty pedestrians on Broadway.

On their side of the missing wall, the night dragged on with a strained politeness. His eyes were glossy, wet. She stared out onto the street. From either the heat of New York’s August and the lack of ventilation, the giant buds sweated under the plastic wrap; and by the time they finished picking through a pile of fried plantains, the lilies open completely, and just like everything at that time of the year — from sweat glands to subway sewers to perfume shops — they began to smell aggressively, nearly nauseating.

“I’m going to California,” she announced after finishing her white fish.

“Why?”

She looked down: After their six-month separation, she had begun to wear dresses and curl her hair again. She’d gained a certain swagger in the hips from wearing flat shoes through every season in New York. The flesh of femininity was finally beginning to lose the aftertastes of her youth’s self-loathing.

Not having gotten an answer, “When?” — he examined her with wet eyes of a lab.

She looked down again. The suppleness of her brown chest surprised her. She looked up: “Soon.”

Vagueness as a revenge: She’d learned that from her mother, the best that ever was! She owed him nothing. He was the one who’d given up! He was the one who left! But now, it settled at the bottom of her stomach, along with the plantains, like something begging for its freedom. And she, in her defense, was no longer “willing”.

Polish has always echoed of my native tongue, but with more softened corners of our consonants. And even if it flies out in a loud form — like from the disgruntled clerk at Warsaw’s Central Station who hollered at the group of passengers that included my old man (that bitch whose Soviet-inspired perm I could’ve easily clawed out if it weren’t for the plexiglass between us!) — this language still flows and gurgles the prettiest, for my ears. Within this week, Polish has become my path to lullabies; and now, I wish to learn it, so that I could always murmur its fairytales to my own sleepy firstborn.

Case in point: The lovebirds with whom I’m sharing this train car for the duration of the 7-hour ride from Gdansk to Warsaw — are quite quickly putting me to sleep after our first ten minutes together. Although I’m certain that the last three days of restless sleep that came from my fear of closing my eyes (so that I wouldn’t stop memorizing my father’s face, after a decade of our living in opposite hemispheres) have something to do with it, too. But during this entire trip through Eastern Europe, I have been thoroughly calmed into surrender by the trustworthy national temperament of the Poles. No other peoples I have ever encountered possess this much gentleness and grace (the Soviet-trained witch at the bus station who dared threatening my father’s dignity — is obviously excluded from this statement).

It is as if after centuries of oppression by every egomaniac who found this lovely country as the perfect place to start a war or their conquest of the world — after unthinkable tragedies the human race thought up and then imposed on these kind people — the good gods of this land have finally decided to protect them from all strife, until the next apocalypse that ends our civilization all together. As far as the Poles go, I think that they have suffered enough to possibly reach their nation’s limits of paid dues.

It must be why for days and miles (oops, sorry: kilometers) by now, I haven’t seen an unattractive native. The kiddos are doll-like, with their giant eyes and smooth foreheads inside the halos of colorful scarves and fur-trimmed hoods of coats: The beauty of their future generation must be the reward for all that suffering. The women are mesmerizing with their luminous faces (without make-up, in most cases) and those Slavic cheekbones carved out of marble by Michelangelo himself (for surely, that guy must be god’s personal architect, these days). The leftovers of the kitschy Soviet fashion are still occasionally noticeable on Warsaw’s streets: in leopard colored fur coats and hair beehives set into unmovable mounts with sparkly hairspray, a tooth comb a curling iron. And then, there are those women who suffer from the universal ailment of unhappy marriages and miserable living standards (those women age so fast!). Also, a few have fallen victim to the mass fad of perpetual smoking (although the young are still not showing the consequences of it). But for the most part, in their beauty, these women — are exceptional!

As for the Polish men, thus far I’ve found them wonderfully well-mannered, educated and non-aggressive. Like this specimen still cooing at his lovely in my train car: Incredibly gentle to the point of being effeminate, he keeps telling her the history of every local sight and landscape that we have passed behind our giant windows. At one point, he gets up, adjusts his tweed jacket (while being childlike and a little nerdy in his gestures); and then reveals two homemade sandwiches (oops, sorry: buterbrods) out of his shiny brown leather attache case. When he starts talking on his cellphone to confirm the schedule of their connecting train, he sounds exceedingly polite and almost bitchy. She giggles and looks at him sheepishly when he cuts off the customer service rep with his blade-like sarcasm. He looks back at her, now encouraged and twice the man, and pats the top of her knee.

These lovebirds have been cooing at each other ever since I’ve entered the railroad car. Between the two of them, she does most of the listening: With a blissful expression on her face whose only stunning characteristic lies in the constellation of her beauty marks, occasionally she slips in a timid compliment in between his never ending sentences, while he continues lecturing. He could be easily be an assistant professor or some brilliant history students at the top of his class. (Um. Sorry: faculte.) And when he delights her with his intellect, she breaks out into a ready laughter, too loud for her demure character.

Of course, were I to have my drathers, I would be sleeping in the dark and in utter silence. But one: It is the Eve of the New Year, after all (and the Poles are huge on celebrations — which must have something to do with their generosity, I suspect). Two: These kids are perfectly delightful. But even though they can’t remind me of my younger self (for I have never had a young romance), I always stand defenseless in the name of kindness, if not love.

Besides, I have been softened by the events of this week’s trip. The best, the smartest and the kindest man of my life — my father — has just departed from the coast of Gdansk:

The man to teach me my self-worth despite our sixteen-year long communication by phone and telepathically shared heartbeat. The one to always offer help and not keep tabs on my mistakes or moments of helplessness.

The first to show me that power lies in kindness and that in my forgiveness — happens love.

The parent from whom I have inherited my sense of justice and the pursuit of harmony, my reason, generosity, compassion; and the very essence of my spirit — has offered me the best week of my life.

And our reunion just so happened to unfold — on Poland’s graceful land.

Moreover: If you want to know the very gist of me, the ethics upon which I stand and the beliefs with which I measure the world; if you want to predict the disappointments of my spirit when others don’t live up to the their goodness (and if you wish to summon my own aspirations to be only good); if you desire to see the shadows of my mistakes and flaws that cost me so much time and heartbreak — the stories in my father’s eyes will tell all.

(His eyes are blue and honest. The man lacks all capacity to tell a lie. And if ever he discovers himself in the unsettling situation of having let somebody down — never due to his shortcomings but only circumstances — his hand comes up to rub the ridge above his eyebrows; sometimes, his chin. He hates to be the cause of pain.)

All other loves of mine — are replicas, and I have spent half of my lifetime searching for the exceptional kindness with which my father treats the world. In the beginning, I was meant to fail: It takes a while to not take for granted the components of our parents’ characters which, with our own older years, begin to make us proud. Identity compiles its layers with our exposure to the world; but the very roots of our goodness can only lead to those who gave us life and hopefully our first opinions of it. Their goodness — is our very, and most important, homecoming. And if I had to choose my only prayer for this world, I’d ask for every prodigal child to find their way back home, through forgiveness, wherein lies the discovery of what was missing all along. It always lies in our parents’ souls.

(There are two folds, now permanent, at the medial edge of father’s eyebrows. In those, he carries his concerns for those lives that he has vowed to protect. In them, I see the weight of manhood, his duty and his sacrifice. The endless rays of lines at the outer edges of my father’s eyes. How easily they bring him back to lightness! My father lives in constant readiness to bond over the common human goodness and delight. He’d rather smile, for life, and not brace himself to witness his child’s or the children of others’ pain. He’d rather give and then dwell in that specific peacefulness that happens after generosity — and not be helpless at relieving someone of their deprivation.)

The whole of lifetime, I can recall the never failing access to my gratitude. In childhood, I couldn’t name it yet: I never needed any reasons or explanations for the lightness of those days. My adolescent years posed a question about the qualities that made me differ from my contemporaries; and when I watched my friends make their choices, while inheriting the patterns of their parents, I started wondering about the source of what made me lighter on my feet and ready for adventure. I was different, but what was really the cause of it?

(My father lives in readiness to be childlike. When new things capture his imagination, I can foresee the eyes of my son, when he would be continuously thrilled by the world. Dad frowns a bit when he attempts to comprehend new things, but never in a burdened way: So intently he tries to comprehend the world, he thinks hard and quickly to get to the very main point of every new event and person, the central apparatus of every previously unknown bit of technology and invention. And then, he speaks, while studying your face for signs of recognition. To honor others with his complete understanding — is crucially important to that man!)

It would be gratitude, as I would name it later: The main quality of my father’s character that made me — that made us — different from others. The privilege of life never escaped my self-awareness. Just breathing seemed to be enough.

In the beginning years of my adulthood, which had to strike our family quite prematurely, I started aching on behalf of seemingly the whole world: I wished for human dignity. We needn’t much in order to survive, but to survive with dignity — was what I wished upon myself and everyone I loved (and by my father’s fashion — I LOVED the world and wished it well!). And then, when life would grant me its adventures, however tiny or grandiose, the force of gratitude would make me weep. Then, I would rest in my humility and try to pay it forward, to others.

(No bigger thrill my father knows in life than to give gifts. They aren’t always luxurious, but specific. They come from the erudite knowledge of his every beloved that my father gains through life. Sometimes, all it takes is someone’s equal curiosity toward a piece of beauty — and this magnificent man (my father!) would do anything to capture just a token of it and give it as a gift. He looks at someone’s eyes when they are moved by beauty, and in his own, I see approval and the highest degree of pleasure.

And I have yet to know another person who accepts his gifts more humbly than my father; because in life, IT ALL MATTERS. No detail must be taken for granted and no reward can be expected. So, when kindness is returned to my father by others, he is seemingly surprised. But then, he glows at the fact that all along, he had been right, about the world: That everyone is good!)

And that’s the mark that father leaves upon the world. He never chose a life with an ambition to matter, but to commit specific acts of goodness — is his only objective. With time that has been captured in my father’s photographs, I see his own surrender to the chaos and sometimes tragic randomness of life. And so, to counteract it, he long ago chose to be good.

The roles reversed: When I departed, nearly twenty years ago — so reckless in my youth and dumb — he was the last to disconnect our gazes.

Such had to be the burden of the ones we left behind! And such — the mindless blessing of the ones with great adventures to distract them from the pain of leaving.

What courage it had cost him — to hold the ground and not crumble then, until I turned the corner! And how I would never learn it, until I birthed a child, myself!

And yet, he did: My darling old man. The hero of my lifetime doomed to never disappoint my expectations.

The one to whom my every love would be compared: the ultimate ideal for a man’s goodness. My goodness.

The one who, in tumultuous times, had to commit the ultimate, unselfish act of love — and let me leave in my pursuit of bigger dreams than our homeland could offer. (Would those dreams turn out to be worth our mutual sacrifice? My life is yet to reveal its bottom line. But how I pray!)

And when my hardships happened, oceans away — the one to suffer heartbreaks of a parent’s helplessness and the titan strength of prayer.

The one to not let go, despite the distances and family feuds. (Alas, human stupidity: It never fails to permeate a story.) The one to change in order to keep up. The one — to love and wait.

And pray.

This time, I saw him first!

The crowds of tired passengers were whirling all around him: Loves leaving, in their acts of youthful recklessness or being pulled by bigger circumstances. The lucky ones — were coming home. The floor tiles of the airport endured the writing of rushed footsteps, scoffed wheels of those things that people felt they had to bring along; the punctuation of chic heels of pretty girls; the patter of children’s feet, so blissful and undamaged in their innocence. Tomes could be written if every footstep could be interviewed: The snippets of humanity’s stories that were so often unpredictable, impossible to imagine. But when these stories happened to make sense — when stubborn courage persevered, when love learned to forgive — they found unequal beauty. (Oh, how we could all pray for that! Oh, how we should pray!)

One million more of pedestrians could be packed into the terminal — and I would still recognize my father’s outline. The mind’s a funny thing, of course: Recently, it began to blackmail me with forgetfulness. The first nightmare in which my father had no face — would be the turning point I’d call Forgiveness.

But when I saw him — and I saw him first! — I knew that I would not be able to forget him, ever! Because he was the one I’d spent half a lifetime trying to get back to; the one with whose name I’d christened my every accomplishment; with which I had defeated every failure. He was the love; the never failing reason for it. My starting point and the North Star whose shine I followed to find my way, in and out of grace, and back again.

And when I saw him first and called him: “Oh, my goodness!”

It had to be a prayer, for I had learned to pray — in order to come back.

No cinematic trick can capture the surreal speed with which he turned in my direction. The mind sped up. It knew: This had to be THE memory of my lifetime. This — was where my life would turn its course; and in the morning, I would no longer be the prodigal daughter looking for her homecoming, but an inspired child of one great man.

He turned. The smile with which he studied my departure, nearly twenty years ago, returned to his face, this time, again: It was a tight-lipped gesture of a man trying his hardest not to crumble. The loss had been magnificent; an the return — worth every prayer.

I waved. And then, I waved again. The mind continued turning quickly. It had to remember every single detail of that day, so it could last forever. And fleetingly, it granted me a thought: The manner of my wave was very childlike, as if belonging to an infant mirroring a kind stranger’s hand. But in the moment, I knew no vanity. I cared none — for grace.

When dad’s hand flew up, I noticed: He’d aged. His timid gesture was affected by the trembling fingers and the disbelief of someone who hadn’t realized the perseverance of his prayer. C’mon! There had to be some moments in his life, historical events of giant hopelessness that the entire world endured since last I left, when he, like me, would lose the sight of reason.

Or maybe not. Perhaps, my father prayed! Perhaps, he prayed and bargained with his gods for this very opportunity to persevere life — and see my running back into his arms.

For this one moment, all — had been worth it! My life was worth when my father held me for the first time since nearly twenty years ago.

There’s gotta be evidence of what he looked like, back then. Considering it’s only been half of my lifetime ago since I’ve last seen him, I should be able to remember. So, think! Last time. Last memory.

Half and half. That’s how this story goes. One half — chalked up to my childhood; the other — to having to grow up. The first — to innocence; the other — to no choice.

And only in the later day reflections of myself in the glossy surface of a photograph with someone who looks like the younger me, do I occasionally notice it again.

I was innocent. He — was quickly aging. I was rushing time. He would die if only he could slow it down, at least a little.

How could that happen: that the other half of life demanded a leap larger and longer than any of my or his predecessors have ever committed? Why wouldn’t growing up alone — be enough? Life had to change. So, continents shifted, and so did our outlooks. Our lives.

And I couldn’t wait, too. I’m sure he had something to do with it, though. I couldn’t wait to be of age, to understand him so completely; to answer him right on the dot, precisely, perfectly and so grown up. I wanted to become the company he’d always choose over all others, while he walked and chain-smoked. I would be equal, I imagined. And I would be so poignant, when grown-up, so fascinating, he’d want to jot down my statements. Then! Surely then, he would be so proud!

But first, I think it started as a rebellion against my kindergarten naps:

“When I’m grown up, I’ll never nap!” So serious — so stubborn and determined — I was already very certain that my life would go in a different way; my way. At least, the other half of it; the one that I myself would dictate.

And so I got my wish: Somewhere at the end childhood, things began to change. For all of us. Most grown-ups I knew had no choice — but to catch on. The children had to grow up: Historical transitions aren’t merciful to innocence. So, yes, I got my wish; and halfway through my teens, grew up so quickly, one day, he would have to rediscover me, in awe:

He’d go on thinking that he had failed me; had failed my innocence. He could not protect it from the avalanche of new events. Why wouldn’t growing up alone — be enough? So, for the entire second half, my father was ashamed.

To think: Last memory.

I was already grown up, or striving to be so. Completely clueless about the challenges of an adult life, I was flippant and quite impatient to depart. I would choose to do it all alone: to make a leap larger and longer than any of my or his predecessors had ever had the courage to commit.

But I — had the courage. I was his daughter, after all.

One thing I do remember: Dad always bore his feeling bravely. In all my life until then — in all of my innocent first half — I hadn’t seen my father cry. I would that day: The day of the last memory.

But think: The details, the evidence of what he looked like.

Stood tall, I think. Or was I merely short and still a child (although no longer innocent). His hair had been turning gray quite rapidly. On every waking morning — another start of his courageous bearing — I’d watch him pour another cup of coffee and become an older man.

That day: He chain-smoked. But of course! Standing outside the airport, he chained smoked. That day — he’d look at me, so proudly, I’m sure, but to protect my innocence, to prolong my childhood — he thought he’d failed.

Neither one of us suspected that it would take a whole half of my lifetime — to reunite; and that a half of a life — is long enough to lose one’s last memory.

So, I would rather learn: What does he look like NOW? What will he look like, when we reunite. But any way he looks, I think — shall be a start. A good one — of a new memory, after the second half.

She was encouraged to grow up as tall as her father and to smell like her beautiful mama, even if she was ever caught in the midst of a drought.

“Because that’s what we, pine trees, do, my little one,” her mama told her. “And if you grow up particularly pretty, they might choose you, in the middle of next winter.”

“Who are ‘they’?” the baby tree would ask, every year. (Like all children, she liked her favorite stories repeated to her, endlessly.)

“The unrooted ones,” mama would whisper and sway to block the tiny dust clouds heading into her child’s hair — with her long, long limbs.

Oh, no! She wouldn’t grow up to be an ordinary tree, her mama gossiped to other mothers. Her daughter was meant to be unique. First of, she was gaining inches day by day.

“The taller you grow, the sooner the unrooted ones will get you!”

And: She was pretty! Such a pretty baby tree: with long, dark green needles that weighed down her lean branches toward the ground! All the other kids seemed to have upright branches. Their needles lined up into mohawks and made them more susceptible to storms. When winds gained speed, or rain began to pound the soil above her roots, she seemed to endure it all with grace. Light on her feet, she would let whatever weather run its moods through her hair; and after every type of precipitation, she made tiny slides for the rascal raindrops. The little ones would chirp and tumble into one another; hang onto the very edge of her needles, then leap onto the next one — and repeat.

She didn’t know where the rascal raindrops would go once they rolled off her long hair and hit the ground; but she imagined they built tunnels in the soil and lived there, with their families (but after they would fall in love, of course).

One time, though, she questioned her own theory when a particularly familiar rascal raindrop appeared her eyelash, after she awoke from her impatient dreams:

“Haven’t I seen you here before?” she asked the sparkling babe. But he was already chirping too loudly to hear her question; and as soon as the other kids woke up, he began to slide, slowly at first and on his belly, with his arms outstretched forward. The further he slid, the more rascals joined him, and they would go faster, laugh — louder; and their chirping made her tilt her branches even lower and give the kids a bigger thrill.

“Maybe,” she thought, “they all fly up to the sun instead — to tell its rays to be a bit gentler on us.”

(Drought — was told to be her only fear. Besides that — she had none.)

Sometimes, she would get the glimpse of the unrooted ones. A particular one continued coming around too early in the mornings; so, most of the time, she would sleep right through his visits. One day, though, he came up to her and woke her up with his shadow.

He was taller than her, but not as tall as mama. He had flat hair, the color of a sickly pine. It was flat and so dense, it clung to his trunk in one single layer.

“What a strange creature!” the baby tree thought.

“Don’t! Slouch!” she heard her mama whisper through her teeth. She snuck a peak: Mama looked sleepy and wet. But she would NOT shake off her raindrops yet: Because she wanted for all of the unrooted one’s attention to go — to her child.

Would that be it? Is that how it would happen: The moment when she would be taken away to the magical place from where other pine trees never-ever returned? It had to be wonderful there, she thought. Oh, how she craved to travel!

She let the unrooted one pet her hair. He made an unfamiliar noise and bent down to her. A little current of air brushed against her branch. The unrooted one repeated the noise and petted her, again.

She then noticed he had a patch of different-colored needles on his tree top. They were the color of gray snow (like sleeping raindrops). Then, he went back to giving her a treat that smelled absolutely atrocious but mama said it had to be good for her. So, she closed her eyes and sucked it all up, to the last stinky bit. She would behave and do whatever the main unrooted one would want her to do. Whatever it would take — to get her to that place.

There were some stories she’d overheard from the elders. Some said that unrooted ones took them to more delicious soils. Others mentioned that they would only feed them water, in that place — and that was truly strange. But the common truth was that the chosen ones got to wear pretty things and learn how to sparkle.

True: Sometimes, it flies out of her, like a butterfly trapped in between the two tiny palms of a kiddo who hasn’t lived for long enough to realize the fragility of her dreams, yet.

“You can’t do that to butterflies, little one! They break their wings.”

But other times, she must cradle the cocoons of her beginnings, checking up on them, every few breaths: Are they ready for the magical reveal of their births yet? Can they leap out at the world that didn’t even suspect how much it needed them? On harder days of creation, the luxury of time begins to test her patience, and it challenges her — to start. To just: Start.

Because starting — takes a courageous flight of fancy. And only she knows — because she has asked for her creator to allow and to forgive her the hubris to make things happen — only she knows when her beginnings can no longer wait to happen.

The days, the moments, the creations that begin easily — are often easier to also take for granted. And they can’t really be trusted, actually. But the easy creations lighten the step and color the world with more flattering palettes of her imagination. And even though, she may not remember the achievement of that day, she gets the privilege of spending it — while half dreaming: Still the little girl, chasing butterflies, and trapping them in between her tiny palms.

Gratitude comes easy on those days of nearly no struggle. And she breathes through the misty sensation in her eyes: After all, her compassion has not expired yet! And despite all the losses, it continues to give back.

On luckier days, life permits for such illusions to last: That people are good. That art — matters. That beauty — is a common addiction of all humankind. And that perhaps (please, please, let her have this “perhaps”!) we all speak a common language which may be determined by our self-serving needs — but that those needs belong to LOVE. Alas! How marvelous — are those days!

And she learns to savor them! The days of easier creation — of more graceful survival, when the whole world somehow happens to accommodate for her dreams — those days she must savor for the future. Because in that future, as she has grown to accept (once she’s grown up and out of certain dreams), there will be days of hardship. She knows that. No, not just the hardships of life itself: Those, she has by now learned to forgive. After all, they have taught her her own humanity. They have connected all the capillaries between the organs of her empathy and inspirations. And she understands it all so much better — after the days of hard life.

But the hardships of persevering through life for long enough to get to the next easier moment — that task can only be done by eluding herself. So, she suspends the memories of better days. Easier days of creation. She stretches them out, makes them last. (They taste like soft caramel or bits of saltwater taffy.) She rides them out to exhaustion and prays — oh, how she prays! — that they will bring her to the next beginning.

Then, there are days, seemingly mellow, but that do not grant her easy beginnings. On those days, she must work. She must earn the first sentences to her dreams and earn her beginnings. She may go looking for inspiration, in other people’s art. And sometimes, that works just fine: Like a match to a dry wick, other art sets her imagination on fire. All it takes is a glimpse of a tail of that one fleeting dream. It takes a mere crumb of someone else’s creation to set off the memory and the inspiration — follows. Just a whisper of that common language! A whiff of the unproved metaphysical science that it’s all one. We — are one. (Is that silly?)

And when the art of others does not start another flame, then she must have the courage to begin. Just simply — begin! It’s mechanical, then: a memorized choreography of fingers upon the keyboard, the sense memory of the tired fingers clutching a pen. On those days, she merely shows up — and she must accept that it would be enough, on just those days.

Because if she doesn’t show up, then she may as well consider herself defeated: Yes, by the struggles of life and the skepticism of those who do NOT have the courage to dream. To start. To begin.

The courage to remain the children they once were, also chasing butterflies and ice-cream men; sucking on icicles in the winter and building castles under the watch of the giant eye of the sun.

The day when she stops beginning — she will consider herself a failure. But until then, she must continue to begin.

She’s wearing a pair of purple tights and a shirt with stripes of lemon and lime. Her tiny ankle socks match the overall yellowish-green of the shirt, and her feet are trying to wrap around the baby-size chair that used to belong to her younger self (not much younger though, considering she is not even in her teens yet.)

I notice the purple outline around the collar of the shirt:

“Those are some courageous color combos, my tiny one!” I nearly say out loud, but then I stop myself: Getting off on embarrassing a child would make me a major shithead!

And it’s not even mytype of purple either — but it is hers — as we’d figured out over the years. But, actually, her favorite color is green, so she often secretly dedicates her purple choices — to me. Her green is democratic: She likes most shades of it. Although, come to think of it, I’ve never really asked. When ever had I become one of those silly grown-ups — to dare taking these details for granted!

Her most heartbreaking features are her mother’s freckles and her father’s strawberry chin. From the way the sunlight hits her face, I notice the freckles — they now take up her whole cheeks, from the bridge of the nose and up to the temples; and I suppress a desire to hug her: She’s all grown up now — and way too mature for my mushy nonsense. So, I sort of let her dictate the boundaries, on her terms; and keep my grown-up business to myself.

For the last hour, she’s been playing with her father’s iPhone, pulling up songs we both might like. Some tunes are original. Others — are a remake by Glee: all the rave among the kids these days. (And if it weren’t for her, I would have never known it: I AM a grown-up, after all!)

Here comes the widely popular tune of this year: “There’s a fire starting in my heart…”

“Do you like Adele?” she has once asked me before, while hanging out in my bedroom. It made for a long discussion, that night, and we each took turns browsing YouTube for our favorite tunes and dancing. Yes, actually dancing: She, non-vainly, and I — unleashed by her innocence.

“Do you like Adele?” she echos now, looking up at me past her long bangs.

I like the way she wears her hair: It’s always shiny and sleek, never the tumbleweed seen in the photographs of me when I was her age.

We have both grown up as tomboys: I, perpetually clad in sweats as soon as I could get out of my itchy uniform, was always trying to outrun the boys and to lead the armies of first-graders in search of treasures on our town’s rooftops. She — kicks ass at soccer, climbs trees, plays handball; rides bicycles and rollerblades, masterfully and much better than me; and she always looks out for those who are tinier and more helpless. She is kind. She is always kind. For me, kindness, by now, takes discipline. To her — it’s still second nature. Or the first.

We’ve grown up under much different restrictions: I was bound to endless rules by my motha, the pedagogue, and the regulations of bureaucrats that dictated our lives. She, however, is ruled by common sense. Like her American-born parents, she is in tune with the concept of freedom and is already more aware of her rights and liberties at the age of ten. Unlike me, she also knows that choices come with a consequence.

Like this one — of her procrastinating on her homework for the sake keeping me company.

“Love that song!” I mumble. But she is already sneaking a peak over her shoulder and suppressing a gleeful smile. She knows.

Alright! Enough of the nonsense: It’s time for the homework! Or, so the adults tell her.

“Last one! Last one, I promise!” she says, but doesn’t plead. She is SO much cooler than me! Cooler than I’ve ever been!

It’s Glee, again: “I’m walking on sunshine, wooah!”

In a matter of seconds, she bounces, puts the iPhone away, whips out her backpack and plops down in a chair across the table from me. When she thinks, she looks away (sometimes chewing on a pencil): My own childhood habit. Which dreams is she sizing up, right now? What brave escapes is she plotting?

Bright and self-sufficient, she completes the work effortlessly, in a matter of minutes. No problem. She never gives the grown-ups a problem. Neither did I. It’s easier that way: keeps you clear of their nonsense.

But she does say though:

“I wish eight went into 60 evenly.”

I suppress a chuckle — and another hug. I still wish for such things all the time, my tiny one! And that — still! — must be just a matter of my innocence; or what’s left of it.